I stood awkwardly behind the dwarf as he passed around his snapshots, photographs taken of him before his Chance.
“Not bad, eh?” he said, showing me a shot of a handsome man on the beach at Cannes. “I was a handsome fellow, eh?”
It was a joke, but I was confused about its meaning. I nodded, embarrassed. The photograph was creased with lines like the palm of an old man’s hand.
I looked at the woman’s curved back and the gaunt face, trying to find beauty there, imagining holding her in my arms.
She caught my eyes and smiled. “Well young man, what will you do while we have our little meeting?”
God knows what expression crossed my face, but it would have been a mere ripple on the surface of the feelings that boiled within me.
Carla was at my side in an instant, whispering in my ear that it was an important meeting and wouldn’t take long. The hook-nosed woman, she said, had an unfortunate manner, was always upsetting everyone, but had, just the same, a heart of gold.
I took my time in leaving, fussing around the room looking for my beautiful light fishing rod with its perfectly preserved old Mitchell reel. I enjoyed the silence while I fossicked around behind books, under chairs, finally discovering it where I knew it was all the time.
In the kitchen, I slapped some bait together, mixing mince meat, flour and garlic, taking my time with this too, forcing them to indulge in awkward small talk about the price of printing and the guru in the electric cape, one of the city’s recent contributions to a more picturesque life.
Outside the painters were washing their brushes, having covered half of the bright orange with a pale blue.
The sun was sinking below the broken columns of the Hinden Bridge as I cast into the harbour. I used no sinker, just a teardrop of mince meat, flour and garlic, an enticing meal for a bream.
The water shimmered, pearlescent. The bream attacked, sending sharp signals up the delicate light line. They fought like the fury and showed themselves in flashes of frantic silver. Luderick also swam below my feet, feeding on long ribbons of green weed. A small pink cloud drifted absent-mindedly through a series of metamorphoses. An old work boat passed, sitting low in the water like a dumpy brown duck, full of respectability and regular intent.
Yet I was anaesthetized and felt none of what I saw.
For above my head in a garish building slashed with orange and blue I imagined the Hups concluding plans to take Carla away from me.
The water became black with a dark blue wave. The waving reflection of a yellow-lighted window floated at my feet and I heard the high-pitched wheedling laugh of a Fasta in the house above. It was the laugh of a Fasta doing business.
That night I caught ten bream. I killed only two. The others I returned to the melancholy window floating at my feet.
5.
The tissues lay beneath the bed. Dead white butterflies, wet with tears and sperm.
The mosquito net, like a giant parody of a wedding veil, hung over us, its fibres luminescent, shimmering with light from the open door.
Carla’s head rested on my shoulder, her hair wet from both our tears.
“You could put it off,” I whispered. “Another week.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. If I don’t do it when it’s booked I’ll have to wait six months.”
“Then wait…”
“I can’t.”
“We’re good together.”
“I know.”
“It’ll get better.”
“I know.”
“It won’t last, if you do it.”
“It might, if we try.”
I damned the Hups in silence. I cursed them for their warped ideals. If only they could see how ridiculous they looked.
I stroked her brown arm, soothing her in advance of what I said. “It’s not right. Your friends haven’t become working class. They have a manner. They look disgusting.”
She withdrew from me, sitting up to light a cigarette with an angry flourish.
“Ah, you see,” she pointed the cigarette at me. “Disgusting. They look disgusting.”
“They look like rich fops amusing themselves. They’re not real. They look evil.”
She slipped out from under the net and began searching through the tangled clothes on the floor, separating hers from mine. “I can’t stand this,” she said, “I can’t stay here.”
“You think it’s so fucking great to look like the dwarf?” I screamed. “Would you fuck him? Would you wrap your legs around him? Would you?”
She stood outside the net, very still and very angry. “That’s my business.”
I was chilled. I hadn’t meant it. I hadn’t thought it possible. I was trying to make a point. I hadn’t believed.
“Did you?” I hated the shrill tone that crept into my voice. I was a child, jealous, hurt.
I jumped out of the bed and started looking for my own clothes. She had my trousers in her hand. I tore them from her.
“I wish you’d just shut-up,” I hissed, although she had said nothing. “And don’t patronize me with your stupid smart-talk.” I was shaking with rage.
She looked me straight in the eye before she punched me.
I laid one straight back.
“That’s why I love you, damn you.”
“Why?” she screamed, holding her hand over her face. “For God’s sake, why?”
“Because we’ll both have black eyes.”
She started laughing just as I began to cry.
6.
I started to write a diary and then stopped. The only page in it says this:
“Saturday. This morning I know that I am in love. I spend the day thinking about her. When I see her in the street she is like a painting that is even better than you remembered. Today we wrestled. She told me she could wrestle me. Who would believe it? What a miracle she is. Ten days to go. I’ve got to work out something.”
7.
Wednesday. Meeting day for the freaks.
On the way home I bought a small bag of mushrooms to calm me down a little bit. I walked to Pier Street the slow way, nibbling as I went.
I came through the door ready to face the whole menagerie but they weren’t there, only the hook-nosed lady,
